This post is part of a series of posts on teaching to different personality type indicators as found in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. To see more, head here.
In the Myers-Briggs world, looking at personality types they look at the difference between sensing types and intuitive types. (S) sensing types are those that take on the world in a sensory, hands-on way. (N) intuitive types use their intuition to navigate the world and make decisions. Today, we are going to break down intuitive types and how we as teachers can understand them and help them in the classroom.
Traits of intuitive students: big-picture thinkers, can love symbols or theories that may seem abstract. They often “read between the lines.” Future thinkers or dreamers, sometimes not able to follow through on these plans and dreams because they are such elaborate, radical thoughts.
If the sensing types are your hands-on learners, the intuitive types do better sitting with information, learning all that they can on the subject, asking a lot of questions, making connections with other facts, and then internalizing the info.
Just because a student leans towards an intuitive personality type, does not mean they cannot gain positive interactions from a sensory learning experience. They may simply just utilize the materials differently than sensory students.
For example, if you give your 5th graders tens blocks to touch and move and manipulate as you learn division, your intuitive students may interact with the tens blocks, they may do the exercises to show division, and it may assist in their deeper knowledge of the subject. However, there is also a very good chance that they will be more distant from the materials or use them in a way to show how multiplication associates with division and vice versa. It’s important to remember that just because a student leans to intuitive thinking doesn’t mean they don’t use their sensory skills to learn.
Intuitive students are dreamers. They can get caught up in thinking about how to improve any given situation, and their thoughts can take them so far as to come up with ideas that are not reasonable to carry out. The reality of putting these ideas into motion is not there for them.
Intuitive students are great to have in your classroom! Have you been able to pick out the intuitive learners versus the sensory learners in your kids?
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